Tuesday, June 4, 2013

The big reveal is that Sam and Jack's crazy mom killed their father the Judge. But wait!!

I'm still not sure about the Queen. How many of them are there? Are they all fake? Where did the jewels come from, and how did Jack find them in the first place? Were they really buried on the farm? Were they fake too? Did Ruthie know about them? Why on earth would Jack have hidden a jewel in the Spirit of St. Louis in Lambert airport? Why was the King of the Sky a good place to stash the queen for 20 years? Why do the feds care about this, again? How did Raffie's mom get in on this? Do banks anywhere ask you three riddles before they give you your deposit? Will Brad and Melissa live happily ever after? Georgia and Trevor? No one misses the million dollars?

So the book was reasonably fun. I have a suspicion that I missed a lot of the allusions and layers. Would not have read it but for Big Library Read. I think it was a good choice for the program because it's easy to talk about.

The Goodreads data shows some gradual uptake over the course of the free availability.

I think that one's affinity for a book or for an author depends a lot on whether you know and love the characters in the book. Or if you don't know the characters, perhaps they're sufficiently exotic that they fascinate you all by themselves. It helps if the book is well written and cleverly constructed, but that's not enough to make you love the characters. Love strikes like lightning and disrupts like a tornado, destroying one house while leaving the next unscathed. That's why the "book discovery problem" is so hard, and why a friend's recommendation is so much more useful than any algorithm could be.